There’s a piece in the normally dreadful Kaplan “Outlook” comparing Bono to John Lennon. The gist of was that the most foremost politically-engaged star of that day espoused views that made him a target of the CIA while the foremost politically-engaged star of our day pals around with right-wing Senators and tours Africa with the Secretary of the Treasury.
I’m not generally interested in celebrity or in the endless look back in anger at how much everything’s gone to shit since the boomer hippies sold out, but I read this right after hearing the great Clash song “Washington Bullets”, which celebrates the Sandinista revolution, on the radio (a college station) on my way to work, and it struck me that something really has changed, culturally.
There was a time that cultural figures could take genuinely anti-establishment stances and be taken somewhat seriously. Nowadays, freaking Paul Krugman, a wealthy Nobel Laureate who loves NAFTA, is seen as an extreme hippie, not just by the Gergenites but by all the Snooze Hour-watching “liberals” I talk to.
I realize that there are plenty of stridently anti-establishment people out there, but there’s always a sense that they’re financially incompetent losers or drug addicts or that they’ve secretly sold out. In the free-wheeling marketplace of the blogosphere, many prominent bloggers dream of getting a gig with Kaplan corporation, while others issue Moore and Yglesias awards to laud those who mouth pro-status quo platitudes and criticize those who don’t.
It’s hard to escape the sense that something has been sold, and therefore lost.
freelancer (itouch)
We are all Jello Biafra now.
Baud
I think one big difference often ignored between then and now is the ideological war the U.S. was having with the Soviet Union for much of that period. Serious American officials were genuinely concerned about losing the hearts and minds of many in the third world to Soviet ideology, and that checked their ability to silence or ignore social reformers during the 60s and 70s.
Nanette
Yes, one of my pet peeves: if wealthy economists, middle-class bloviators, people concerned with only narrow, basically mainstream capitalist ideas – are now seen as the “far left” or “hippies” (and some even claim those labels themselves) where does that leave the actual far left? Such as it is.
Somewhere in Outer Mongolia, I think.
DougJ
@Baud:
Me too, I agree with that completely.
jeffreyw
Damn near lost the recipe for this BBQ sauce. Good thing I found it because I wanna sell it out! Now accepting bids.
stuckinred
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
General Stuck
Yea, well, when the free love era ended, it just wasn’t worth it anymore. Now you diddy boppers have abstinence only with virgin columnists at the NYT’s. And reefer so expensive, it costs a first born for a decent lid.
Start your own counter culture revolution, and drive a harder bargain if you can. If it’s televised, I might even break down and buy a teevee.
Nellcote
Bono is essentially an anti-abortion republican. John Lennon was not. No surprise Bono gets Village support.
DougJ
@stuckinred:
By chance, a radio station in the middle of nowhere was playing that straight through on a recent drive. Some great songs I didn’t remember, like Sweet Painted Lady.
stuckinred
stuckinred
@DougJ: I got no use for anything after Tumbleweed Connection since they put Madman on the CD.
SectarianSofa
@DougJ
Terrible! Shrill! Twee! Facile! I’m canceling my subscription of bloonjuice immediately!
Keith G
Money. Money changes everything.
The vast amounts of wealth available seem to have created a critical mass of folks who continue to be even more mesmerized by the chance of accumulating even more money.
That proximity to such wealth can only come with the assistance of the “establishment”. If you fight them, it’s harder to to get around their barriers.
Two generations ago, there was a bit more social class solidarity. The Beatles were Scouses. John’s evolving views started there. In the late fifties making it big was a whole lot different than it was in 1982 and beyond.
I wonder if western culture can survive the pernicious effects of the influence of great (potential) wealth on our institutions.
Cheery thoughts.
salacious crumb
Krugman’s only goal in life is to blow Clinton and his wife. When Hillary didn’t win the primary, life for Krugman was over as he knew it. His dreams of getting some sort of chairmanship with the Fed or economic advisor with WH evaporated. Then his mission changed to harping on Obama because Obama defeated Hillary. I have yet to see any article entirely positive about Obama. yes he hates the Republicans too but he hates Obama more than he hates the Republicans
Andy K
@freelancer (itouch):
Can I be Ian MacKaye instead?
handy
This thread is not a rebel thread
JWL
“I realize that there are plenty of stridently anti-establishment people out there, but there’s always a sense that they’re financially incompetent losers or drug addicts or that they’ve secretly sold out. In the free-wheeling marketplace of the blogosphere, many prominent bloggers dream of getting a gig with Kaplan corporation, while others issue Moore and Yglesias awards to laud those who mouth pro-status quo platitudes and criticize those who don’t”.
Wow. Take a tip a tip from Cole and walk away for a day or two, or a week or longer.
You need a vacation.
DougJ
@salacious crumb:
There may be something to that.
DougJ
@JWL:
????
Violet
@Keith G:
Nah. There will be another Dark Ages, just like after Rome fell.
Everyone has a price.
MikeJ
@Andy K: Yes please. Having lived in DC I have nothing but respect for MacKaye. I knew people signed to his label and they uniformly talked about how honest and upfront everything was.
The very idea of somebody calling himself Jello Biafra going all Holden Caulfield on phonies alternately sickens and amuses me.
Roy G
I can’t disagree, however, it’s important to remember that such people do still exist, they just aren’t celebrated by the Village.
I saw Roger Waters perform in San Ho last week, and his last words were about his old friend:
“He was just a dreamer. But he’s not the only one!”
Powerful stuff, and Waters still walks the walk.
John Lennon’s foreskin had more revolutionary cred than Bono.
SectarianSofa
@Andy K:
Yeah, please do, ’cause I’d actually listen to your band.
Omnes Omnibus
@Violet: They end up making payments on a sofa or a girl?
handy
@Roy G:
Ahem.
Baud
@Keith G:
Hate to say it, but I believe the reason there was more social class solidarity is because there was greater racial and religious homogeneity among that class.
beltane
@Baud: Conditions in the US deteriorated after the fall of the Soviet Union as there was no longer any for the corporate elite to put on a show of good behavior. If you think about it, communism was the best thing that ever happened to the working people of the capitalist West.
SectarianSofa
@salacious crumb:
Hmm, agree with DougJ, could be sometihng to that. But Krugman’s not *poisonous* towards Obama (unless I’ve missed it, which is certainly possible) — I’d like to think he’s actually arguing his convictions. I like what Krugman has to say, I like Obama, and I certainly don’t think of Krugman as a wanker like I think of GOS people (excepting Kos), FDL peeps who are the peeps I’m speaking of, etc..
Nellcote
I blame Raygun and the Young Rethuglicans.
DougJ
@beltane:
Yes, I agree. I’d like to do a post about this sometime, but I feel I need some backing research.
stuckinred
@handy: On the run
Captain Haddock
Well the establishment had Michael Jackson whacked because he was getting too close to the truth. There are eyes everywhere.
jl
I didn’t like the article and think it belong is the normally dreadful Kaplan Daily.
Yes, I am a BJ rebel and I DARE to disagree with the oppressive BJ authority figure DougJ, again. Take that!
Then I saw the piece was by William Easterly, and thought, ‘it figures’. Easterly likes to bash people who have grand schemes to help the world, and this article reads like a rehash of his recent book ‘White Man’s Burden’, where he bashed Bono, and Jeffrey Sachs (and maybe Gates, I forget if he got around to Gates in the book) for pushing big development projects.
I think Easterly can be sloppy, and is light on disciplined quantitative analysis, and light on supporting his assertions. And he is long on criticism, and short on constructive suggestions, other than advocating slogans like ‘searchers’ looking for ‘bottom up’ solutions are better than ‘visionaries’ looking for ‘top down’ solutions.
So the olde tymey Lennon and Twain are good rebels and Bono and Jolie and Affleck and Clooney and DiCaprio are apparently no good new timey pseudo visionary technocrats? Is that it?
Seems to me that Easterly is vaguely criticizing the celebrities for being co opted or in over their heads, or pretenders, or something. But then Easterly goes on to approve of the celebrity rebel for pointing out something is immoral? On what basis.
Why the hell did Lennon or Twain know more about what they were talking about when they rebelled against immoral power and the new guys do not when they try something constructive to help? Easterly does not say. The activities and interests of the modern celebs mentioned range so very widely, I don ot even see an obvious commonality for criticism. We have saving tigers, war in the Congo, and Sudan. Easterly does cannot or does not state what these celebs role have in common, so I guess I just need to take his word for it. I am an economist, and I can promise you all, never take an economist’s word for anything, make them show you their work.
I’m also not sure that Easterly is accurate about Twain. Twain did hobnob with bigshots of the day. Twain was publisher of Grant’s memoirs for example, and was so closely involved in the project that he was accused of ghost writing it, since no one could believe Grant could be such a masterly writer, And Twain also suppressed some of his most subsersive work. Was Twain co opted by power. Did he chicken out in order to maintain his his influence and popularity, and his big house in CT? I think that is a valid question.
This is the kind of thing that happens every time I read Easterly. I always think I should read him, since he is an influential economist with supposedly important insightful things to say about development economics and projects. But after I read him, not sure I have learned much other than Easterly’s opinions and learned a few more facile slogans.
stuckinred
@stuckinred: Wow! Live Peace in Toronto is in reissue! Yes I’m Lonely!!!!!
Mike M
As I recall growing up, being anti-establishment was mostly about being against the Vietnam War. The fact that a lot of young guys were drafted and many of them died helps to focus the mind. Bring back the draft, and suddenly a lot of young people will become politically active again.
By the time I got to college in the 70’s, the Vietnam war was over. There were some seniors who remembered turbulent times on campus, but the protests were over and, for the most part, so were the hippies. We inherited the long hair and sloppy dress of our older brothers and sisters, but by that time it had morphed from protest to fashion.
MikeJ
@beltane:
There would have been no new deal without the Russian revolution. There might have been something that looked a bit like the French revolution here though, so it’s a toss up.
DougJ
@jl:
Great comment. I don’t know so much about Easterly.
But…I do think Twain a million times more cutting and acerbic than Bono has ever been.
Omnes Omnibus
@Captain Haddock: That was just just a cover up. It was always Otis Redding they were after.
Otis died 43 years ago yesterday.
Baud
@beltane: Off the top of my head, I would rank technological and scientific progress over communism, but I respect your point. A little competition can be a good thing sometimes.
handy
@Roy G:
And just to add to the Lennon/Bono nexus, the latter had the cajones to call the former a sell-out on the Rattle and Hum album, and then only three years later essentially concede Lennon was right to be cynical about the whole thing when he was struttin’ out his MacPhisto thing in front of sold out stadiums, making gobs of cash in the process.
jl
@DougJ: Thanks. I wasn’t particularly defending Bono, though. I don’t know enough about his charity work to know how much good it does, and as for thinking ability, well, I’ve read his occasional columns in some paper or other, and probably I should be polite and not say anymore.
beltane
@MikeJ: The fate of the Russian nobility was fresh in the minds of the elite in the 1930s. People forget that the wealthy only live in peace due to the tacit consent of the larger population. Fear of economic penalties and of police violence is effective at maintaining that consent, but only up to a point, and that point is something that is very difficult to predict.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this in response to that picture of the shattered window of Prince Charle’s Rolls Royce. Our rulers are powerful, yet also surprisingly vulnerable.
arguingwithsignposts
they don’t fucking listen. that’s the answer. period. we could call and bitch all we wanted, and they still WOULDN’T LISTEN. That’s the fucking problem. It isn’t a grassroots problem, it’s a village problem. And, btw, fuck the juicebox mafia- yglesias, mcardle, ezra, and all their kind can go fuck themselves.
Cat Lady
Frontline did the seminal examination of this phenomenon:
The Merchants of Cool.
There is no cultural authenticity available to our kids. It’s all been co-opted, commodified and monetized.
Tecumseh
As much as I hate defending Bono, Lennon laid in bed for a few days, wrote a few “anti-establishment” songs and one big song about peace before disappearing for awhile to be a house husband and do lots of drugs. What exactly did he accomplish? If I’m not mistaken, the Vietnam War still was fought and the Working Class hero didn’t bring anything to the working class. Bono has raised gob loads of money for Africa and other places and increased awareness of what’s happening there. He maybe annoying as hell, but he gets and got shit done. Lennon was a poser.
PS- Imagine sucks
stuckinred
@Tecumseh:”the Vietnam War still was fought”
Uh, the idea was to STOP it, it was already going on, know what I mean?
J
@beltane: Spot on!
beltane
@Cat Lady: Although one could argue that Julian Assange’s nebulous army of hacker supporters is a genuine counter-cultural movement. There will always be a streak of anarchy in the young, it just manifests itself differently in each generation.
NobodySpecial
@Tecumseh: Imagine doesn’t suck, but yeah, slagging on Bono and Bob Geldof is just the boomers’ way of making their own inadequacies look not so bad.
stuckinred
@Cat Lady: Ever see Hype, about Grunge?
MikeJ
@Cat Lady: I think Douglas Coupeland did it years before the
infomercial channelPBS.MikeJ
@stuckinred: At least there was a core of real youth culture at the core of grunge. Yes, corporate America coöpted it, but real bands playing real music actually existed.
sukabi
It’s hard to escape the sense that something has been sold, and therefore lost.
the soul of this country was sold to the highest bidder about 30 years ago… just scraps left now.
stuckinred
@MikeJ: Yea, that’s what was so interesting about that doc. It also mentioned the “false dawn in Athens”.
MikeJ
@stuckinred: I like the grunge era, back when we were all swinging on the flippty flop.
uila
I’m confused. What about the big bad Professional Left I keep hearing so much about?
alwhite
its why the right has won already. The entire spectrum of acceptable debate spans from wacko wingnut stupid to marginally rightwing stupid.
Assuming we ever grow out of this it will be too late. I assume we will have destroyed the human race & maybe in a million years some other species will have risen. But if we are really unlucky we will just be a hollow wasted ex-empire, whole owned by the oligarchs in China.
Jewish Steel
Oh yeah. You’ve hit the nail on the head with this observation.
Even bands that could be thought of as having indie cred throughout the oughts were mum on the topic that shitheel GWB. Had nothing to say politicswise. Astonishing.
D Boon is spinning so fast his grave’s probably smoking.
MikeJ
@alwhite: Why do you think oligarchs in China are any different from oligarchs in the US?
Baud
@alwhite:
My heart is rooting for the dogs, but the smart money is on the cats.
Baud
@Jewish Steel: It’s called the “Dixie Chicks Syndrome.”
xephyr
The bizarro world rules. Sold out. Sold out. Sold out. Welcome to neo-America…
Oh, and btw, Bono isn’t fit to lick John Lennon’s boots… which I imagine are still around somewhere.
lamh32
OT, but i’ve got to admit I love watching “it’s a wonderful life”! It’s on NBC!!! I’ve never really understood though why that damn savings and loan could never keep money. Mr Potter was threatening to buy out that place forever!
BTW, anyone else think Mr. Potter is Dick Cheney’s long lost grand-daddy? They could be twins!
HE Pennypacker, Wealthy Industrialist
Nice touch using the Clash quote.
And Bono, you are no John Lennon.
Roy G
@handy that’s the stuff.
Anybody who doubts Lennon’s activist cred needs to check out The United States vs. John Lennon
PS
In support of Beltane, the reason for veterans’ benefits, specifically the college fund, was essentially fear — specifically discussed in 1943-4, not invented ex post — that dumping all those WWII vets onto the job market would literally provoke a revolution. (In the UK, something similar brought the National Health Service and a bunch more.) The happy consequence was the economic growth of the 1950s. Talk about doing well by doing good. But the lessons do not get learned. Instead we have flannel from Brokaw about the “greatest generation” … Dude, serious people thought that the “greatest generation” was going to string the government up from lampposts.
Andy K
@MikeJ: @SectarianSofa:
I’m glad I’m not the only one who feels that way about Eric Boucher. I never felt anything other than annoyed when listening to him screech like an alley tomcat lookin’ for a little something.
I met Ian briefly when we booked a Beefeater show here. Good guy. But I did kinda have to sneak the guitarist (Fred?) over to Burger King. He’d been under Ian’s watchful vegan eyes for far too long on that tour.
BTW- Do you guys ever pick up a Tesco Vee vibe from DougJ?
stuckinred
@PS: the bonus army, anacostia flats
MikeJ
@Andy K:
I’ve spent many nights freezing my ass off in Welwyn Garden City (home of Tesco’s machine room) and I don’t know what this means.
PS
Back to music. PBS had some 60s folk show on the other night, which (stretching things) included film of Bobby Darin singing “Simple Song of Freedom.” Given that Darin was tailored-made for Vegas, and was still wearing a tux even as he sang that, in the middle of the Vietnam War, it struck me as a genuinely brave move:
No doubt some folks enjoy doin’ battle
Like presidents, prime ministers and kings
So let’s all build them shelves so they can fight among themselves
and leave us be those who want to sing
Come and sing a simple song of freedom
Sing it like you’ve never, ever, sung before
Let it fill the air
Tell the people everywhere
We, the people here, don’t want a war
Darin was actually risking something (his money). Whereas you could certainly say that hippie singers (including my man Lennon) were at least in part playing to their base (me). But at least Lennon mailed back his MBE.
Wile E. Quixote
Hey, can we start another “I hate Slate” thread. The latest Slate nontroversy. Why aren’t there more Republican scientists and engineers? Well here’s the answer, it’s because Republicans are stupid, dishonest and lazy.
It’s not Democrats who are trying to shove bullshit like “intelligent” design down our throats. It’s Republicans. The Republican party is composed of people who elected the incredibly stupid George W. Bush and who think that the incredibly stupid Sarah Palin would make a great replacement for him. Republicans are too lazy, too stupid and too dishonest to become scientists or engineers.
Today’s Republicans are every bit as hostile to science as any Soviet commissar pushing Lysenkoism or any Nazi denouncing the theory of relativity and quantum physics as “Jewish science”. The fact that there aren’t many Republican scientists and engineers isn’t a problem with the scientific or engineering communities any more than the lack of black Republicans is a problem with the African American community. Nope, it’s the Republicans who suck here. Fucking Slate.
uila
@alwhite: It’s amazing to me how politically disorienting the last two years have been. I honestly believed the GOP was on the verge of becoming the American version of the Quebecois party – vocal and marginalized – and yet they had a tremendous influence on all the legislation they didn’t vote for, and have basically barnstormed back into power. And everybody’s so fucking terrorized at the thought of them back at the controls, that any criticism of the president precipitates a moral crisis, to the point that Cole is lying in bed awake at night worrying about it.
It’s basically 2003 all over again, where criticizing
the warDemocrats is tantamount to giving aid and comfort toAl-QaidaRepublicans.PS
@stuckinred: Yes indeed. The fear was not irrational!
stuckinred
@PS: I did a good bit of research on the GI Bill for my diss. The background is amazing. The elite schools wanted nothing to do with vets.
Andy K
@MikeJ:
Oh, the snarkiness, I guess. The fact that so much of what DougJ writes- even post-hoaxy, blogging DougJ- can be easily misconstrued so as to be taken seriously if taken out of context as relates to the larger body of his work. Like this.
Come to think of it, Cole might be more like Tesco in that way.
Tom
There are still anti-establishment bands (Arcade Fire for one), it’s just that music is so fragmented now that the only big bands are the older, more tempered acts. I don’t think Bono was so conservative friendly when he wrote Sunday Bloody Sunday. still, even springsteen is still pretty partisan.
But, I do think it’s more the fact that the young, politically passionate bands don’t have the chance to be a popular as the Clash were back in the day.
stuckinred
@Tom: Two summers ago REM played Atlanta and I was amazed how many people booed when Stipe talked about Obama.
alwhite
@MikeJ:
who said they would be any different? They might be less sympathetic to Euro-centric America but I assume they will be sociopaths interested in their own interests and nothing else. So no different
alwhite
@Baud:
I think cats – they are smarter and more ruthless. but cockroaches are more resilient.
Tom
Imagine is a, at the very least, good song that hipster douche bags like to hate because of its ubiquitousness.
And Lennon was a poser because he didn’t stop the Vietnam War? Who are you measuring him against? All those other antiestablishment artists who stopped major wars?
Lennon was no poser. I mean, putting an album out like Plastic Ono band when he was one of the two most popular musicians in the world is not something a “poser” does.
Though, Elvis did get a good dig at him with the “was it a millionaire who said ‘imagine no possessions’ line.”
Gian
one of the major benefit concerts in the 80s
when thatcher was PM
U2 played, the northern ireland events were still going on
in the set – Bob Dylan ain’t gonna work on maggies farm no more.
on the album Joshua tree, listen to “bullet in the blue sky”
yeah, they may have “sold out” since. But the whole body of work is in no way anti choice republican…
Iraish Catholic national – anti violence? much easier to argue
Tom
@Roy G
Exactly.
alwhite
@uila:
They have really controlled the American government since reconstruction. When I was a kid the Dems were in their hayday but it was the Dixiecraps that controlled everything. If they sided with the Republicans the real Dems could do nothing. Its one thing that made FDR special, he paid off the dixiecraps or ruled by fiat what he got done was amazing. Johnson was the master of the deal – except for ’64 when he made the civil rights act the law by brutal force. He is completely under appreciated because of that stupid war. Kennedy and Carter could never have really beaten them into submission.
Reading about the antebellum USA makes it pretty clear, nothing has changed about our government, it is rule by minority – and a stunted sick one at that. What has changed is the stakes.
We are losing now but can’t afford it; they are going to kill us. The best analogy is in “Hunt For Red October” when the oh so clever Soviet sub commander removes the safeties from the torpedo & it is turned against him, the XO turns to him & says “You arrogant ass, you have killed us!”
PS
@stuckinred: I’d forgotten that, about the elite schools. It’s been a while, but I think we’re on the same page here.
Ah, Atlanta. I spent 1980 there. The big shock to me then (and I don’t know if it’s changed) was that you couldn’t find an Otis Redding record in the white stores and you couldn’t find the Allman Brothers in the black ones. There was a little sliver near Emory that was — how you say? — integrated. And a fabulous gay community, which more or less saved it for me (and I’m straight).
Jewish Steel
that’s weird. I think I’ve been moderated.
did I accidently spew a spam word?
stuckinred
@PS: I’ve heard about how much fun the ATL was in those days. I saw the Brothers three times before Duane got killed.
Yutsano
@PS: Go back. You’ll hardly recognize the place honestly. Atlanta has become this blue sea of diversity in redneck woods country. But it really has integrated and segregated and integrated all over again since 1980.
stuckinred
@Jewish Steel: Happened to me yesterday.
stuckinred
@Yutsano: there are more people in Gwinnett than Boston.
Tom Q
I’ve got an Annie Leibowitz poster of Lennon hanging in my office, so I bow to none in my esteem for him. But I see no reason to trash Bono (or Clooney, Jolie, all the rest), who seem to try to do a little good. (And, as far as “hanging out with right-wing Senators” — I don’t see how that’s much different from spending a week co-hosting the Mike Douglas Show. Both were done to try and spread their message to areas that might be resistant)
Yes, there used to be genuinely left fringes in this country — not the pathetically milquetoast version the press gets hysterical about today. This seems to me to be a natural outgrowth of an America that started moving left in FDR’s day and reached its zenith in the late 60s. Obviously politics in this country took a rightward turn, starting with Nixon, or, latest, Reagan, and now the fringey voices are on the right. It’ll turn around again; it’ll just take time.
stuckinred
@Yutsano: Yea, all that stuff where the gay yup were callin the heat on the brothers for hangnin on the gentrified corners was fun.
stuckinred
Giants-Vikes moved to Monday
Yutsano
@stuckinred: It pisses me off, but gay men tend to be some of the most racist folks around. Many a gay man refuses to date anyone but a white guy. I think it’s the whole Sully illusion of staying as far in the privilege structure as possible. And I honestly don’t get it. I’ve dated just about every color of the rainbow. Indigo is still being coy.
hamletta
I don’t see what’s wrong with Bono schmoozing Jesse Helms if it got more money for people with AIDS in Africa.
The way I see it, Bono is a Christian who walks the walk. He’s using his money and fame to effect positive change in the world, and yes I heard that joke about God thinking he’s Bono 15 years ago, and I still think it’s funny.
And wasn’t it Lennon who said, “If you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao/You ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow.”
Were Bette Davis and John Garfield just jerking off when they started the Hollywood Canteen?
Did Myrna Loy suddenly become full of shit when she became the first UN Goodwill Ambassador? How about Audrey Hepburn? Angelina Jolie followed in these great ladies’ footsteps before she became big box office, so I’m inclined to take her somewhat seriously.
And hell, my hat’s off to that godawful Kim Kardashian, even.
If Justin Bieber were to take up the banner of sane, reality-based sex education, can you imagine what could happen? When George Clooney testifies before Congress, it gets ink/bytes/airtime, and that’s a good thing.
Fame is a currency. If the people who have it are willing to spend it on a good cause, good for them.
stuckinred
@Yutsano: And black folks voted against prop 8 in droves. People suck. . .
fucen tarmal
@General Stuck:
grandpa, what’s a lid?
hamletta
@stuckinred: It doesn’t surprise me. REM, like a lot of Southern bands, came up through the frat circuit. The 2nd or 3rd time I saw them was at Vanderbilt, and the Greek contingent was there in spades.
handy
@Jewish Steel:
True. And though I’ve given Bono and his mates a couple digs on this thread, one thing that strikes me about them and their contemporaries in the 80s was how overtly political, even anti-Reagan/anti-Thatcher even some of the popular music was. There was still a sense people had that, if given a microphone, they had at least some kind of obligation to say something. Nothing like that exists today in the “rock” scene.
And REM fans booing Michael Stipe for talking about Obama? Wow. We are a dumb nation.
Davis X. Machina
@alwhite:
Mah nishtana ha-laila hazeh?
PS
@Yutsano: Yeah, I really should check out Atlanta a generation later! Even then, the gay scene was attracting folks from many states around (some of whom went on to NY or SF). My then wife was studying at Emory, and I got a job as a waiter at the Peasant Uptown, where essentially all the staff were gay, so no local straight people applied, but what did I know? Many of the staff were flat-out escapees from the rural South, and they were so happy to find each other. Best part about it. That was before AIDS, or at least before it was known, which, ah, affected the social dynamic.
But what was the re-segregation, re-integration business?
hamletta
@stuckinred: That’s not true. The canard that black people voted for the H8 amendment was disproved by polling data. But only in the days and weeks after the election.
Andy K
@hamletta:
Heehee…
The Big Boys- We Got Your Money
I’m the big question
You’ll never understand;
And to all you frat boys:
We got your money in our hands
Cacti
@Nellcote:
This.
Bono is christian, Lennon was an atheist. It’s never okay for a politician in the US to be friendly with an atheist.
Yutsano
@PS: The way I understand the history (and this is from a friend who moved down there herself): huge white flight to the suburbs, traffic got so bad and snarled and the city underwent a revitalization project, so some of the younger white folk started coming back.
ino shinola
Don’t quite understand the Lennon=good, Bono=bad vibe.
I’m old enough to remember those days of protest, I felt, still feel, that the Vietnam war was an atrocity. If I’d been 2 years older I probably would have been drafted. I would have left the country, sometimes wish that would have happened.
But I don’t get warm and fuzzy about the purity of the movement. I’m not judging his motives, but John Lennon made a whole lot of money on his antiwar songs. He may have helped end the war, but the main reason it became unpopular and ended is because the sons of wealthy villagers (yes, there was a village in the days of Walter Cronkite) were getting sent overseas to die. The main reason young people were protesting the war is because they were getting sent overseas to die. My generation’s enthusiastic support of Reagan a few years later and the media’s treatment of every crackpot foreign intervention since is pretty solid evidence of just how shallow our antiwar convictions were.
Since only black people and hillbillies go to war anymore, and they enlisted for the privilege, the media doesn’t get too upset about a few thousand people a month getting killed for some poorly defined cause. If Bono is savvy enough to realize he can’t change that and thinks there are more effective ways to use his celebrity and money to ease suffering, I don’t care if he gets his picture taken with George Bush. I have no idea how effective Bono has been with his work, but I admire him for trying. My sense is that there are a lot more wealthy celebrities engaged in worthy causes than there were during the 60’s, again I have no idea how effective they are.
And I’ll bet the CIA is watching Bono, too.
Cacti
@salacious crumb:
I’m second to none in my amusement at seeing the left canonize the Ivy League neoliberal academic who once penned an article entitled “In Praise of Cheap Labor”.
General Stuck
@fucen tarmal:
Dave ain’t here man
calling all toasters
Is this crazed* Krugman-hate a new thing? Is it just that now, when liberals are seeing Obama as a failure/weakling/turncoat/fool/whatever, they need to punch somebody who was a critic before, say, Jamie Galbraith and Robert Reich? Because they are socking Obama a lot harder than Krugman ever did.
*he wants to blow Clinton? They don’t like an article title? Oy.
Socraticsilence
The comparison also has another element- Bono, as much as I like to mock the sanctimonious douche, has actually achieved tangible things in the way of debt forgiveness– additionally, I’d argue that “Sunday Bloody Sunday” is as explicitly political and as risky as anything Lennon ever put out.
Chuck Butcher
These comparison things make me ill. Obama vs FDR, Bono vs Lennon, Boomers vs (whoever the fuck). It is childish and smacks of some kind of envy thing. Times and circumstances were different. The actual question to be asked is whether someone is seeking an improvement in the state of humanity (or even some narrower metric).
I can’t think of anything much stupider to engage in. It’s a lot like the cliche of the girls arguing about whose dress is prettier and who looks like a whore. I’ll be go to hell, there are a lot of people here who have made some contribution and that should be measured against, what? Making the stars shine brighter?
I’ve made some differences, more than most people and a lot less than a lot of people. Well I’m not going to throw myself from a high place because I don’t look so good next to … Mother Theresa. I look OK next to what I might not have done. Bono looks pretty damn good next to … oh fuck it, I ain’t doing comparisons. I’ll take a big dose of people trying to do some good.
jl
@Cacti:
No no no! Krugman is crazy leftist, probably a commie. I heard it on Morning Joe, it must be true.
@calling all toasters:
Thanks for the links to Galbraith and Reich screeds. They are good shrill screeds. The last three paragraphs of the Galbraith piece are great.
But what Galbraith and Reich are doing there is not what Krugman usually does in his NY Times work. Krugman tries to explain economics to a mass audience of educated laymen. In those pieces Galbraith and Reich are preaching to the choir.
@Socraticsilence:
The economist who wrote the article does not like debt forgiveness as a policy, and does not like celebs like Bono who stick their noses into his hobbyhorse. The article DougJ discusses would have been better if Easterly had laid out his economic case against some of the campaigns Bono had worked for, instead of slapping together sloppy and dubious contrasts to Twain and Lennon, and using a shotgun approach to insult seems like all current celebs who are using their fame and money to try to better the world.
fucen tarmal
@General Stuck:
classics, i can’t bring myself to watch them without being stoned though.
pot has gotten better, while getting more expensive….though i think one of the few things my generation got good out of this american experiment, was relatively good weed, at fairly low prices, during the early to mid 90s.
Dave Trowbridge
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers…
jl
@calling all toasters: Another thought. I think a problem with the Galbraith and Reich pieces is that they assume that their view of good macroeconomic policy is right, and it should be obvious to every right thinking and well intentioned person that they are right.
That is not true. Galbraith, Reich, Krugman, Stiglitz, Diamond, and the rest of the Keynesian crew who believe that theory, and who use something like what other scientific fields would recognize as a consistent method to analyze data, and who are ready to put their necks out in recommending Keynesian policies are a minority, I think.
I agree with them, and think that the course of the consensus of the U.S. macroeconomics and economic policy academics and policy wonks over the last 30 years or so has been an intellectual scandal and a disgrace. But I am in a minority.
Obama hung around Chicago, where the facile and in my view very non empirical approach to economics thoroughly penetrated the law school there as well as the economics department. Obama’s sincere (and perhaps very shallow) economic instincts and views may not match up with the Keynesian view, or any approach to economics that can be called an empricial science very well. We can blame Obama for that, but then we would also have to blame well over half of the academics and policy wonks in the U.S.
It may take time to change that. People who have invested decades into a failed intellectual effort are rarely willing to change after they are in middle age and have a lot of intellectual capital, reputation, status and income to defend. Right now lots of graduate students have witnessed the macroeconomic consensus make a fool of itself over the last three or four years, and they make take a different path. Let’s hope so.
Dennis SGMM
@Chuck Butcher:
Yes, it’s a variation on the “Good Old Days” refrain. Twenty years from now the equivalent of Blogs (I’d bet on Faceworld) will see a posting about how Bono was way more real than North Korean activist/artistic bungee-jumper Sum Yun Gai.
It was ever thus.
Bill Murray
Slate is nuts if they really believe that most engineers aren’t conservative. As an engineering professor at an engineering college, I’d say about 80% of engineers are conservative.
Thomas Frank’s book The Conquest of Cool covers much of this ground, I think.
DougJ
@Wile E. Quixote:
We had two on this yesterday.
Chuck Butcher
@Dennis SGMM:
After posting it I wondered if my phrasing might lead to the GODs theme and I not only meant that but the larger sense of “anywhen”. I will not compare myself to you (for example since I don’t know you) on the basis of any damn thing. Whether I am more/less than you in something is of no interest to me. That you might be able to inform/educate me might be of interest but that is something entirely different.
fourmorewars
The right wing senators mentioned in this post aren’t listed in the article. The Treasury Sec. is, but they aren’t. What worries me and anyone who’s read The Family is, are the right wing senators named Brownback, or Coburn, or Inhofe, or any of the other Family Nazis flying under the media radar while they pursue their let’s-place-a-sympathetic-figure-high-up-in-every-third-world-gov’t agenda? (Fave chilling line from the book: the Albanian government official who, according to James Baker himself, welcomed him, the first American SoS to visit the country post-Cold War, with the words ‘I greet you in the name of Doug Coe’).
Bono is mentioned in the first chapter of The Family. He was the guest of honor at one of the big yearly prayer breakfasts. ‘This is really weird,’ is what Sharlet quotes him as saying. But it’s sounding like he still works with them. Not good.
Jimmy Knickers
@salacious crumb: Seriously? That’s what motivates your world?
D-boy
This 1,000%
To me the article smacks of Easterly getting in a cheap dig at Jeffery Sachs because he is friends with celebrities. Honestly, who the fuck is Easterly to comment on the subversiveness of anyone?
D-boy +5
calling all toasters
@jl: I hear you. It’s not so much that economics is a dismal science, it’s that a lot of economists are dismal at science. But then even the academic economists make a lot of their income consulting to banks that have an interest in manipulating the system. It’s not in their interest to promulgate an empirically-based system that can be shaped into policy that benefits the populace. Sadly, Obama has seen fit to listen to those guys, and not the Krugmans of the world.
Don’t even get me started on the University of Chicago. *spits on ground*
Karmakin
The “problem” with Bono is actually a much more common problem than we like to think. I’d actually put folks such as Clooney or Jolie above Bono in terms of the good that they do.
So I’m not dismissing the whole do-gooder celebrity thing. It’s just that Bono usually seems to have little interest in actually changing the underlying structures that make his charity work necessary. That’s the core difference, at least the way I see it. It’s not that the charity work is a bad thing, of course,
The work he’s done in terms of debt forgiveness has been great. That’s exactly the type of thing that celebrity do-gooders should be focusing on. Why this so common is another question. I personally think that sometimes it is cynicism, and sometimes it’s ego and hubris and the search for prestige. In Bono’s case, I definitely think that it’s the former and not so much the latter.
Re: Modern revolutionary music, yeah the biggies these days are The Arcade Fire. Although to be honest I wonder if there’s something in the water in Montreal, as I think at least for me the most powerful song about the modern structure is Metric’s Gold, Guns, Girls.
And traditionally? Of course, and there can be no debate. Ever. Everybody Knows by Leonard Cohen.
Comrade Kevin
Yes, yes, but has Bono fucked nuns? He hasn’t joined the Church yet.
Tecumseh
I’d love for their to be a return towards a radical chic and where the left was taken more seriously, but that’s an Overton Window type discussion. And for what it’s worth, the Republicans ascended to power pretty much by feeding off the resentment “Real Americans” had towards those on the left.
As for Bono, the reason why he was hanging out with Jesse Helms or the guys from the Family is because he realized that if he wanted more aid sent to Africa and to make the issues of Africa more prominent, he had to deal with people with whom he didn’t agree with. Helms was against sending money for AIDS relief to Africa until he met with Bono and wound up sponsoring a bill to send more money. Say what you want, but Bono sucking up to Helms led to a good thing. That, by the way, was something that made more of a a real, tangible difference in the world than John Lennon.
U2’s political message has lost a lot of it’s bite since Bono became Mr. World’s Messiah. They’re 80’s and some of their 90’s stuff was a lot more pointed but now their message songs are all fluff. And, yes, it’s because they’re more of the Establishment now and, yes, Bono occasionally deserves to be smacked upside the head and told to shut up but he’s doing good stuff in the world.
annamissed
The left has been co-opted – look no further than the rap/hiphop phenomena. Or the music business, film, or the art world. The attitude, formerly known as genuine moral outrage, has been homogenized into the latest TV commercial, or reality show as a matter laughable affectation.
The dread has become so all encompassing that no one will even consider, let alone champion the idea of facing up to, or resisting it.
Except maybe Julian Assange, whom has come face to face with universal condemnation.
Calouste
@Roy G:
Saw Waters tonight and it was an amazing show and amazingly anti-war and anti-establishment. (It included footage from the “Collateral Murder” video, to give an example.)
Xboxershorts
The Boomer Hippies never sold out. We were just never in as great a number as many wanted to believe and our pro-establishment brethren rose to the top while the actual hippies were beaten into submission (literally and figuratively) by the state. The boomer hippies I know are still working to bring change.
If you honestly think the hippies sold out, Doug, then you don’t know what a hippy is.
El Cid
And, once more, the key to getting the respect of douchebags like Dana Milbank is having one Democrat ‘stand up to’ other Democrats whose policy stands are what are considered to be “more liberal”.
Via Fred Hiatt’s Kaplan Daily Right Wing Asshole World:
Another asshole, drugged Beltway maniac who thought that the healthcare debate dragged on because of liberals.
Yeah, Max Baucus bottle-necking everything to a stop for no point and no gain for the entirety of crazy Stalin Screaming Summer — main, he was practically smoking dope and proclaiming himself part of the Maoist International Movement.
Yeah, okay. Up until now Obama’s been putting into law everything that Bernie Sanders and the Berkeley Town Council has sent to him, only now that The Voters Have Sent A Clear Message, he has grown up and started governing like a real man, like a real man whom Dana Milbank can admire, rather than the subsecretary of the Central Committee of the Obamunist Party.
Also, the health care bill was legislation. You know, the kind of thing which sort of requires the legislature to fucking pass it.
What is Milbank smoking? He admires Obama now for pushing a budget compromise but back when House Democrats were pushing an anarcho-soshullist health care bill which would have shot all Republicans in the head, Obama should have stepped up with his magic wand and rammed his massive package down their throats (as the screamers of Stalin Summer tended to eerily consistently homoerotically say).
RIght! Who the fuck does Congress think it is to say it has something to do with legislation?
Milbank is just really happy that Obama stepped up and publicly repudiated those “sanctimonious liberals”, so his little pee-pee got all stiff.
One interesting punchline from the Dick Whisperer:
Oh. Okay. Right.
So, when there’s going to be a Republican House, Obama’s going to “show his newly discovered spine” [i.e., the spine you only get from giving the finger to those wacko extremist liberals] by doing what exactly?
Oh. Here you go. Here is how Obama will ‘show his spine’ in the new Republican House which has spent the last 2 years calling him a soshullist and Kenyo-nesian and terrorist sympathizer and so forth:
There you go. By begging the House and Senate Republicans for “issue by issue” coalitions, Obama will thus show he ‘has spine’ by, um, asking various House and Senate members to vote for what he would like.
I wonder if there were ever any “shifting set of coalitions” with regard to Obama’s health insurance reform.
No, no, of course not, at that time the whole legislation just came out of the Democratic House Fidel Castro Caucus and all the other legislators just went along.
OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD COULD OUR BELTWAY PUNDITARIAT GET LOST IN A SNOWSTORM SOMEWHERE AND SOMEONE ACCIDENTALLY LOSE THE KEYS TO EVERY WASHINGTON POST EDITORIAL AND OPINION OFFICES AND PASSWORDS TO THE E-MAIL ACCOUNTS?
Via the GOS.
El Cid
Maybe Ishmael Reed can team up with Dana Milbank to determine whose calls for Obama to ‘man up’ — those from a few liberals and ‘progressives’ who want Obama to back policies more to their preferences, whom Reed decries, or those whom Milbank rallies, who call for Obama to ‘man up’ (use his “newly discovered spine”) against his own party’s liberals and ‘progressives’.
I’ll watch the Sunday Talking Heads Zombie Shows to determine who’s more likely to be heard talking about Obama’s need to ‘man up’.
Hint: I think it will be those talking point Beltway big-heads calling for him to more and more frequently refudiate liberals and progressives, and not let the CPUSA dominate the Obama administration with their vegan sit-in movement any more.
El Cid
And once again, we have the stoned, deluded nonsense Beltway ahistorical presumption that it’s been those pesky liberals getting in the way of passing all that important legislation.
The U.S. Senate does not exist. There is no unified Republican block to cloture.
There are/were no conservative Democrats such as Ben Nelson, Kent Conrad, Mary Landrieu, Lieberman, etc., who have entirely blocked the course of legislation because of their whims.
Bart Stupak did not threaten to destroy HCR because it didn’t sufficiently pay for witch burnings for women who were vaguely thinking about having an abortion for the fun of it.
Oh well. We must all remember that Americans Sent A Clear Message from the last election, though apparently they didn’t send a clear message in 2006 or 2008, since the problems since then was that all those Democrats who were elected were pushing too hard to do those things that they thought they might have been elected for.
CENTER. RIGHT. NATION.
Eat it, libtards!
El Cid
We have another reason why Julian Assange should be assassinated immediately for releasing 1300 secret documents Wikileaks was given by someone else to major newspapers who also reviewed and published them:
Remember, it was proof of Russia’s state killing of Litvinenko that they failed to catch the assassins.
Instead, it appears that Russia was trying to stop the radiation-carrying assassins before hand and shared that information with British ‘intelligence’ but the UK told them to piss off.
This is of course proof that it was all a grand scheme by Russia — an enemy so vile that it would apparently share the information on their own assassins with the government where the assassinations were likely to happen.
How can diplomacy ever work if the good work of diplomats fails to be protected from a vow of silence good for 20 – 50 years?
[Again — this may be all 3rd or 4th hand bullshit from the US diplomat discussing the CIA-provided info he was using. It’s still likely that Russia was behind the assassination.
But I’m pretty sure that the part about the UK waving off the cooperation of Russian intelligence could be verified.
This is about the public discussion of the issue and the universal conclusion based on official sources as to what happened and how.]
DPirate
The other side of it may be that Bono isn’t all strung out on heroin.
Dennis SGMM
@El Cid:
The increasing vilification of “liberals” by Democrats is sadly ironic. Just where are we supposed to go and what are we supposed to do – other than dutifully show up at the polls and pull the lever for anything with “Democratic” after its name?
From my admittedly jaundiced perspective it looks as though the temporal gap between today’s Democratic party and yesterday’s Republican party is narrowing at an increasing rate. Although I’m 62 it is not, when I’m feeling particularly despondent, difficult to believe that, within my lifetime, choosing between the two parties will be pretty much like choosing between Ford and Chevy or Nissan and Toyota.
alwhite
@Davis X. Machina:
The only difference I can see was that there used to be some Republicans that could be bought or were at least open to reason. Other then that
ist keiner
Dennis SGMM
@DPirate:
Neither was Richard Milhaus Nixon.
pking
Of course, “Imagine” is a favorite song of Canadian conservatives.
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/904009–harper-rocks-tory-party-with-musical-performance
How their heads didn’t explode singing “Share the Land” is a mystery to me
sparky
@El Cid: not a criticism exactly, and perhaps i am not awake enough, but i find i can usually follow your err wavy line between satire and serious. these comments, not so much.
Svensker
@Nellcote:
Actually…
The hubster and I were talking last night about the change that came over the US in the 80s. Kids went from being idealistic to idolizing hard chargers who were making a killing in the markets. There was a definite change in the ethos in the 80s — any social scientists out there who have written about it? — but it seems to have accelerated and hardened since then, until making money and being “successful” (in status/money sense only) are the only things that really matter in the culture of the US anymore.
Svensker
@El Cid:
@El Cid: @El Cid: @El Cid:
Time for walkies? Nice cup of decaf? Day spa?
El Cid
@sparky: I was being sarcastic. I lazily pointed toward the Ishmael Reed column, hoping people would read it. In it, Reed not only questions the moral sensibility of ‘progressives’ in their opposition to Obama / Obama-backed policies, but his suggestion that ‘progressives’ — based on one with whom he spoke — think the TeaTards were actually a grassroots force against Wall Street power even though Reed had pointed out the Neo-Nazi and other racist signs and elements.
When you make the argument that a reason that liberals or progressives are wrong to dissent from some Obama policy, fine and good, but don’t suggest like a crazy person that it’s a representation of ‘progressives’ or liberals that they were too supportive of and defensive of the TeaTards.
Second, if you express the notion that liberals calling Obama to ‘man up’ is linked to how Reed was considered behaviorally incorrect during his youth connected to cultural conceptions of African-American culture, you want to also do that to all the Beltway pundits, centrists, and conservatives who have always been calling for Obama and every other Democratic leader to ‘man up’ against liberals.
Cacti
@jl:
Yep.
A regular Che Guevara for our day and age.
edg
John Lennon screwed a never ending string of women. Bono masturbates while looking in the mirror.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
There was a time that cultural figures could take genuinely anti-establishment stances and be taken somewhat seriously. Nowadays, freaking Paul Krugman, a wealthy Nobel Laureate who loves NAFTA, is seen as an extreme hippie, not just by the Gergenites but by all the Snooze Hour-watching “liberals” I talk to
When Noam Chomsky came to Wellington, NZ, to speak (a decade or so ago), they sold out the Opera House within days of the talk being announced. So they set up a tele-link to the Paramount Theatre as well. That sold out. So they set loudspeakers outside both – and caused severe traffic problems from all the people listening.
He’s listened to all over the world and treated as a serious critic – except in his own country, where he’s regarded as a weirdo.